On February 1st I was scrolling my newsfeed on Facebook and came across a post in the Scrap Gals Community Facebook Group on the tradition of using the month of February to finish several of the projects that you just never got around to completing! It made me think about some of the pitfalls for completing projects that often affect me.
- By the time I come across an unfinished project, I have no enthusiasm for the project anymore.
- Other events or pictures have eclipsed those memories in importance
- Sometimes I don’t like the products I was using at the time (even though I thought they were perfect at one time!)
- I’m just not into whatever style or media I was using when I started.
- I have new products calling me to use them right away.
- I am afraid to “waste” what little time I have to scrapbook on an old project when I have current stories and photos to document.
Do you relate to any of these pitfalls? I think that the idea of setting aside one whole month to go back to my unfinished projects would possibly help me to finish at least some of them, and in the process rid me of some of the guilt of “wasting” supplies, and my past time and energy. I may not be able to finish everything I want to finish (I have the 3 past years of unfinished December dailies and if I am honest I have been putting these off for- well- 3 years.) But I can do what I can for one short month, and let the chips fall where they may. Right?
I really love to travel, and when a photo album I had of a trip I took to India was destroyed (in the pre-digital photo days) I cried over the loss of those photos and memories. So for me, this month is going to start with finishing some travel journals that are really important to me. I am happy to announce that I did it! I finished the TN insert of my trip to Thailand last September! One down and…never mind how many to go.
Here is the short list of Clique Kits products I used in this journal. I love that Clique Kits is now offering Limited Edition Traveler Notebook kits. I hope that at some point there will be enough demand for a full TN subscription kit.
- The Cosmo Cricket Art Deck. This is a booklet, the same size as a TN insert full of pretty sayings hand script with trendy designs as resist patterns on watercolor paper, along with some gold foiled designs.
- Assortment of Washi Tapes
- My goes-everywhere-with-me box of Prima watercolor paints and a waterbrush. (no link because they are sold out- but I imagine they are available other places!?)
- A bunch of skeleton clips like the ones visible in some of the photos. These are a must for using anything wet while on the go since you need a way to keep your pages open to dry.
- The travel stamp set by Meli Melo studio that Clique Kits sells, which is perfect for stamping in your TN!
- This lovely butterfly stamp.
A couple of things to note before I conclude this post. This was my first attempt at working in the Traveler Notebook insert formula and there was a little bit of a learning curve for me. First, I am used to working with wet media on cold press watercolor paper or at least mixed media weight paper. I learned that the paper in the average TN insert is quite thin, and I figured out halfway through the project that it was better to paste two pages together than to try to use them singly when using anything wet on them. So yeah, the front half is full of wrinkled, flimsy pages and the second half is much more sturdy and lays flat.
I loved adding little bits of memorabilia to the album, like this 20 baht note (Thai currency). There is a story behind this particular note- and now I will never forget it!
I used this project as an opportunity to practice some brush stroke lettering, without pressure because my lettering was not perfect and I was totally okay with that! (unlike how I would feel if it were on a scrapbook layout) I am now enamored with traveler notebooks and whatever the trip or subject, I know they will be very personal to me and something that I love to look back through in the future. I also plan to work on an archiving system for them for when they are finished and end up on my shelf. There is much to talk about with Traveler Notebooks that I will save for future posts!
I would love to hear from you if you have any unfinished projects to work on during #Finish-it-February and what some of your pitfalls are to getting them done. Maybe we can help each other!
-xoGia
